Dear reader: what do you want to know about sustainable farming?

.......and more specifically, what would you like to know as it pertains to meat?

Please post your questions as a comment.

Terra Madre.. Why a donate button?

In my last post, I spoke of Beth's impending trip to Terra Madre and included a "Donate Now" PayPal button to help raise some money to defray some of the costs of the trip.

Some readers may ask "Why ask for money?" "It's your choice to go, shouldn't you pay for it?" Indeed, these are questions that Beth wrestled with in making the decision on whether or not to go to Terra Madre. The fact that Slow Food Chicago is already footing a good part of the bill made Beth hesitate to pass the hat herself.

But... the funds from Slow Food Chicago exist because of their fundraising. They raise money to send local food leaders to Terra Madre because it is important that their community is represented by articulate, knowledgeable, and passionate food producers that understand the issues of our region, AND because those leaders will use what they learn in Italy to further the Slow Food cause when they get home. Beth is such a leader...and why she was chosen as a delegate.

Beth will represent the Slow Food community at Terra Madre.  She will, also, represent the Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm community. Although there are definitely intersections of the two, we decided it was appropriate to allow the CVSF community to be able to support Beth's efforts as well. After all, isn't that what our agriculture is all about?

Terra Madre Redux

Okay... So back in the spring Beth and I each applied to be delegates to Slow Food's biennial conference in Torino, Italy. Beth was selected as an alternate - I unfortunately didn't make the cut at all.

Beth viewed her "alternate" status as a pretty firm "no" as who would give up a trip to northern Italy? As the busyness of spring and summer on the farm and at the farmers market and at soccer practices and various points in between, we pretty much forgot about Terra Madre.

Well.......

.... about a month ago, Beth received word that spaces for alternates had opened up, and we had to make a decision about whether or not she would take one and go.

For me it was a no-brainer, "You're going!"

Beth went back and forth for about 24 hours weighing the pros and cons of going. With overwhelming support of family, friends, and farming colleagues the pros soon outweighed the cons - by a long shot.

Never the less, learning about an international trip with just 8 weeks notice adds some logistical and scheduling challenges -farm chores still need to get done, kids need to be fed, clothed, etc, and markets attended - as well as some financial decisions..,.

Although the Chicago Slow Food chapter is very generously providing much of the funding for the trip there will undoubtedly be additional costs. A rough estimate is that the trip will cost about $600 above the support from Slow Food Chicago. We've been saving for a family trip this fall and can reallocate those funds to Terra Madre and just delay our family trip until spring.

Another thought is to raise some of the money from our community of  farm supporters, hence the Pay Pal donate button below. For everyone who donates and provides a mailing address, Beth will send a postcard from Torino. Beth will blog about her trip; and we are brainstorming ideas of how she can share her story with supporters when she returns. A "farm dinner" is one of the primary ideas at this point; of course we are open to suggestions!

T is for Tokarz

Andrew Tozarz in tradtional shepherd attire.

Just a couple of years into our farming experience, Beth and I were nearly burnt out, and we considered throwing in the towel and going back to our more conventional careers. Starting any business is stressful and time-consuming. Starting a diverse, sustainable, farm in a sea of corn and soybeans is that, plus it's lonely and isolating.

An early frost, ended our second season of vegetable CSA a couple of weeks early. To be perfectly honest, we were glad of it. That's how exhausted and discouraged we were. Fortunately, we didn't quit. Rather we regrouped and registered for our first farming conference - a CSA conference in Michigan. Although we'd beeen growing a Community Supported Agriculture business for two years and had cultivated a community of eaters, we hadn't tapped into a community of farmers.

The Michigan CSA conference showed us just how collaborative and supportive the people involved in sustainable farming truly are. Not only did we learn a lot about making a CSA work, we, also, learned that we weren't alone in our struggles. Not feeling alone was probably just as important as all the new knowledge we brought back. Beth and I credit that first conference with keeping us in farming.

Still, in our part of Illinois, sustainable farms are few and far between and staying connected in our busyness is not always easy - but it's the connections that keep us going. Over beers one night during the winter of 2008, Larry O'Toole and I concieved the North Central Illinois Farmer Network (aka greenfarmers) to make it easy for farmer like us to connect and support one another. 

So, we started a Yahoo group and invited all the sustainable farmers within a 1 1/2 hour drive to meet at a independent coffee shop in Joliet, IL, which was a central location. We asked everyone to share the invite as widely as they could. One of the farmers that came to that first meeting was Andrew Tokarz.

Andrew lives in Chicago, but he and a group of entrepreneurial Poles operate a cooperative sheep farm in Lemont, Illinois. The members of the group take turns at the farm caring for everyone's sheep (most have other jobs in the city). Andrew's enterprise is dairy sheep (& amazing sheep-milk cheeses) and Polish Tatras (a rare breed of livestock guardian dogs).

Jody with our guardian dogs - Sasha, Sophie, & Harry

At that meeting, we learned that he had a litter of Tatra pups that needed work. As we have every known predator in northern Illinois living (and eating chickens on our farm), it was serendipity. A few weeks later, Sasha and Sophie arrived on the farm. Harry was added last year. We've found them to be incredibly intelligent, friendly to our human visitors, fiercely protective of all our animals. They've definitely earned their kibble over the past four years!

Beth with Sasha.

Thanks Andrew!

J is for Jack

Jack is our youngest, but is quite easily the most enthusiastic about farming. A couple of months ago he told me: "Dad, when I retire from being a pro soccer player, I want to be a farmer just like you."

 Whether it's helping pick eggs, feeding the pigs or moving the cows to a new pasture, Jack wants to help. If I have tractor work to do, he rides along. When I go to pick up feed or farm supplies, Jack rides with. The whole time is filled with questions about what, why, and how we do things. In his nearly six years, Jack has absorbed an incredible amount of knowledge about our sustainable farm.

Last year, at the end of a long day in Springfield for the Local Food Lobby Day, Jack and his brothers insisted that they come along to our meeting with Lieutenant Governor Simon.

All our boys are emeshed in our farming enterprise with Jack most of all.

G.H.

Ten years ago, when we were starting what we thought was the only Community Supported Agriculture vegetable farm in  LaSalle county, another farm was getting theirs in the ground as well. That farm is Growing Home Farm (aka Les Brown Memorial Farm) in Marseilles, IL just 13 miles east of Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm.

Larry O' Toole

It wasn't until our second season that we were made aware of Growing Home (G.H.). One day, a CSA member brought Larry O' Toole with him when he came to pick up his weekly box of vegetables. Meeting another sustainable vegetable farmer in the endless desert of corn and soybeans was a breath of fresh air, and the beginning of what continues to be a fruitful collaboration between our farms - that continues today. (In fact, I when I finish this post, I'm going out to till compost into our small garden with a tiller borrowed from G.H.)

Over the years, Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm has done A LOT with G.H. We've hosted trainees on our farm, helped put in transplants there, shared seed orders, eaten potlucks, complained, commiserated, and celebrated with Larry an the G.H. staff.

After hurricane Katrina (and the less well know but equally devastaing Rita) I and two staffers from G.H. traveled to southwest Louisiana to volunteer for two weeks. We left just after Thanksgiving 2005, for New Iberia where the Southern Mutual Help Association had a bunkhouse for volunteers set up in a church building. The multiple skills required for farming translated very well to helping with the storm recovery.

In 2008, upon our return from vacation in Texas, our walk-in freezer failed. We called G.H. for help. Larry and a crew of four others showed within an hour and helped move everything to alternative freezer storage. It is not a stretch to say that GH save our business that day! We're grateful to have G.H. as part of our community.

F is for facebook

Admittedly, this post is a bit disjointed...I'll work on it in the coming days. If you have some "clarifying" thoughts, please leave them for me...

I'm a "long-form" consumer of information. I read books, listen to National Public Radio, and enjoy meandering, in-depth, conversations. Unfortunately, we live in a short-form world that requires information in smaller chunks. Also, time constraints limit our ability to put out a lot of long-form information.

At Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm we try to give a combination of short and long-form information.  Our website has a number of pages where people can dig in and learn a lot about our farm and how our community support agriculture program works. This blog allows us to take a bit more time and delve into issues of farming and community and sustainability more thoroughly. We publish a monthly electronic newsletter that gives a snapshot of what's going on at the farm as well.

But, we've found that people like to get a picture of daily life on the farm. For that, we have a facebook page. Although, not social media experts, we enjoy posting pictures and links that relate to the farm. Plus it's interactive, with fans giving feedback, almost, in real-time. I know, once we get comfortable with our Twitter feed, it will be. Until then, facebook is a good way to connect with our community.

We're all about local food, so I'm amazed at the reach of this blog and the facebook page. It took me awhile to wrap my head around having fb fans in Iran and blog readers in New Zealand; but a fan pointed out that  "food and farming are such a universal concern." She's right, of course. The agriculture decisions made here in north central Illinois and the decisions made in Brazil and Niger and Thailand have global implications. Animal confinement in northern Europe? Palm-oil plantations in Indonesia? Super market or farmers market?

We're all inter-connected, and we're under a lot of pressure. The choices we make in the next few years, will have a huge impact on what the world looks like in 30 years when we have another 2 BILLION mouths to feed. I have a vision of a world where nutritous food and clean water are basic human rights and biological diversity in crops and livestock are tenets of a healthy ecology.

American farmers have bought into the concept that they "feed the world." I reject that premise and seek world where people are empowered to feed themselves, locally. Blogging, and fb allows me to connect with people who share this vision in all parts of the world - so we can work together to make it happen and change the world.

If you like to add to this effort, "like" us on fb and share this blog with your friends!

Ellen Malloy and the U.S. Farmer and Rancher Alliance

Before I post for the A to Z Challenge I HAVE to share this post from my friend, Ellen Malloy. She is one of the people that will help us reach the "tipping" point where sustsainable farming and good local food "spreads like wildfire."

Ellen:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for attending and for asking tough questions and for getting pissed off, and for not backing down and for dropping the f-bomb! Hopefully, it was a "thought bomb" as well!

http://backyarditarian.com/2012/03/29/just-because-the-canary-is-alive/

 Here is Ellen's bio:

Ellen Malloy is the creator of Restaurant Intelligence Agency. Founded in 2007, RIA connects restaurants to audiences that matter — the media and diners — via simple, easy-to-use software. Her goal is to help chefs use the internet to promote themselves and their restaurants by redefining restaurant marketing and by building a strong, sustainable community of chef-focused restaurant industry professionals, diners, and media.

 After a successful career in PR and Marketing, Ellen was determined to learn the business of cooking from the ground up, working for two of Chicago’s most esteemed chefs, Michael Kornick and Jacky Pluton, and then rounded out this on-the-job training with a culinary education from the Culinary School of Kendall College, where she graduated at the top of her class, and later earned a Sommelier Certificate from the Court of Master Sommeliers.

After completing culinary school, she opened up shop as a restaurant publicist. From 1997 to 2008, she turned her company, Paperclip, Inc., into one of the country’s premier restaurant PR firms, representing Michael Jordan’s restaurants and nationally acclaimed chefs such as Paul Kahan and Rick Tramonto.

Identifying the coming shift of information distribution, back in 2007 she anticipated how inefficient those practices were becoming. Jettisoning the standard structure, she moved her PR operation online, building a service to handle the foundation of good restaurant PR — information distribution — at a fraction of the cost of traditional PR. The RIA website was designed to house and archive an affordable digital version of a paper press kit with room for marketing events and promotions.

As an expert and insider in the restaurant industry (recenlty ranked #9 in the list of the most influential people in Chicago's food scene) Ellen is building tools that help chefs discover that they can support their business by honoring their craft and expressing their individuality; help media discover the true voice of the respected artisan chef; and help diners discover new chefs they can follow over the arc of their careers.

Terra Madre - second essay

What is your vision for the food movement? How have you contributed to this vision locally, nationally, and globally?

Just now, my youngest (5) asked me “What are you doing?”  I told him I was writing; but, the real answer is that I’m changing the world.  This would have been hubris when our family embarked on our sustainable farming adventure ten years ago. Over the past decade, I’ve learned that sustainability is as much about the support and involvement of community as it is about farming practices.  

Just as we are feeling the effects of Norman Borlaug’s “green revolution” forty years hence, the eating and farming decisions we make today will ripple into tomorrow.  My vision is that I help to teach people to eat thoughtfully with import and a connection to their food and their grower.  My hope is that my small efforts combined with many others locally, nationally, and globally will reach Malcolm Gladwell’s “magic moment” when it “…tips, and spreads like wildfire.”

Terra Madre 2012

Over the next 10 days or so, Beth and I will be writing applications to be delegates at Terra Madre 2012. We will share them here on the blog as we go along. The bolded text comes from the application, our response is below. Please leave comments and help shape our application!

Tell us about yourself! How has your community's food history, culture, and system shaped your identity, values, and sense of purpose? (Max. 150 words)

I grew up on a diverse grain and livestock farm in northern Illinois. This medium sized farm (500 acres) provided a high standard of living for our family of six and two business partners. Much of what we ate came from our farm. Grains and livestock were sold into competitive markets. However, in 1987, I left the tradition of family farming for university when the farm credit bubble burst.

Leaving the farm left a void in my life. When we moved back to ancestral land ten years ago, farming was different from what I had known. It was no longer possible to make a living on a small (or medium sized) farm growing commodities. I could not come back farm like my father. I had to reach back into my grandfathers’ heritages and produce food for sale directly to my community. Looking backward, I’ve become a 21st century farmer.

Who is Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm? Part 1.

It’s more “who are Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm?” than “who is Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm?.” Although Mitt Romney has boldly asserted that “corporations are people my friend;” Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm is definitely not a corporate farm. It is the family operation of Jody & Beth Osmund as well as their three sons – Richard, Duncan, and Jack.

Jody (43) grew up about 8 miles from where he now farms. While growing up, he helped on his dad’s diversified grain and livestock farm in Serena, IL. Jody’s parents, Richard and Eileen, still live in the house and on the home farm where he grew up. At its height, the farm encompassed nearly 700 acres, grazed 100 cow/calf pairs, raised 700 hogs per year, harvested 450 acres divide between oats, corn, soybeans, wheat, and alfalfa hay. The farm, also, had a flock of 150 laying hens. Picking eggs and taking care of the hens was one of Jody’s childhood chores.

By 21st century, conventional agriculture standards the Osmund farm was quite small – too small to support a family on. However, in the sixties, seventies, and early eighties it felt big; it provided quite a good standard of living for the Osmund’s (a family of six) and a neighbor with whom they farmed in partnership.

Things began to change in the late eighties when the farm crisis hit. You may remember Willy Nelson’s Farm Aid and John Mellencamp’s hit “Rain on the Scarecrow” bemoaning bankrupt farmers and lost legacies. Fortunately, the Osmund’s did not suffer dramatically in the farm financial crisis. Still, farming was not the number one (or two or three, or four) career of choice for aspiring, bright, young farm kids in the late eighties. Jody graduated from Serena High School in 1987, went off to college and away to a professional career like so many of his peers.

Beth (43) grew up a “town girl,” but was friends with farm kids. Although a sizeable town for the area, Ottawa (pop. 18,000) is surrounded by farms; and, in the eighties, Ottawa had a lot of farm kids in its schools. Beth first met Jody at the county fair, and eventually was set-up on blind date with him by one of her farm-girl friends.

Upon graduating from Marquette High School, Beth left Ottawa for Northern Illinois University’s college of education. The two dated off and on throughout their college years. They married after Jody completed a year of graduate school with him following her to Salt Lake City, Utah where Beth was teaching Special Education at a school with a large “at risk” population. Her first classroom was in a converted janitor’s closet – perhaps I’ll post on education at another time.

Foods Resource Bank

On October 15th, while Beth was delivering shares to our Oak Park drop off, I attended a Foods Resource Bank (FRB) Harvest Celebration just a couple of miles from Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm.

FRB is a Christian NGO that works overseas (in 30 countries on every populated continent but Australia and North America) to help alleviate hunger. Although my proclivities tend toward the secular and humanist, this is an inter-denominational religious organization that has a really good approach to food and hunger.

Basically, FRB, raises cash to implement programs in food insecure regions that help people to create their own food security. First of all, FRB does NOT provide direct food assistance. Simply distributing free food is counterproductive to building food security as it puts farmers already growing and selling food in the area out of business. It's hard to compete with free. In starvation situations, FRB will allocate up to 25% of their aid to emergency food assistance - however their overall goal is to build the knowledge and infrastructure needed for resilient, sustainable, local food systems.

How do they do this?

• Focus on the specific needs of community being served
• Develop local assets
• Invest (modestly) in tools and seed
• Commit strongly to education, training, and community organizing

How do they raise the funds?

FRB volunteers organize Growing Projects to raise funds. Corn was the crop being harvested at the harvest celebration I attended. For this project, suburban and rural congregations work together, and for the past two years have worked with local farmers to raise a corn crop. This crop is sold at the local grain terminal and the cash proceeds are donated to FRB.

The farmer donates the use of land and his farming expertise to the project.

Once the land is secured, money and donations are raised to supply the inputs needed to raise the crop -GMO seeds, fertilizer,  diesel fuel, herbicide, pesticides, etc.

Why donate cash instead of the crop?

The logistics and high cost of shipping the actual grain to the hungry make this approach unfeasible. FRB says it is almost always best to buy food from nearby when there are emergency food needs. Wow, what a refreshing departure from government food aid program. Besides, the corn raised is not suitable for human consumption.

Anyone see the irony here?

High input industrial agriculture is being used to raise money to support low input, sustainable agriculture in areas of food insecurity.

Why was Jody at the harvest celebration representing CVSF?

Partly for entertainment...

Once people get over their awe of the massive, technological marvel of a modern combine (the grain harvester) watching corn get harvested is a bit like counting train cars or watching paint dry.

There were several farming demonstrations going on. A local sheep breeder did a sheering demonstration. Another had and old fashioned miniature baler and turned a large bale of straw into many small decorative bales.  My cage of hens that kids could feed popcorn, blades of grass, and grasshoppers were a big draw. Plus getting to talk to an actual farmer away from a noisy machine was pretty novel, for kids and their parents,too.


Partly out of nostalgia...

People of a certain age remember when their grandpa or uncle had a farm with animals that they would visit. Or they had  a neighbor that kept hens and a garden and sold them eggs and vegetables. It's harder to connect to one's food as it once was.

Partly for education...

I talked a lot about community supported agriculture and how local foods contribute to the health of our communities and our economy.

Partly as a counter balance...

Even as the combines raced across the fields sucking up bushel on bushel of grain and disgorging it into the semi-trailers, the people visiting my table understood that their current food system is out of whack. Being able to speak to someone farming on another path shows them that things can change and with the support of a community, that change can be for the better.